Apparently, a new Star Wars coming out this year wasn’t good enough news, Disney is officially set to purchase 21st Century Fox, and with it numerous creative assets that will make comic fans everywhere weep with joy.
The mega-titans at Disney are reportedly going to be paying $52.4 billion dollars to acquire a strong majority of Fox’s networks and properties. IGN reports that it will acquire networks such as FX, Natural Geographic, and what shares Fox has in Hulu. The real meat of the deal, however, is the Marvel properties that Fox will be handing over to them.
Specifically, these comic properties include the likes of the X-Men films, Deadpool, and the Fantastic Four. This means that in the next few years, you’ll see Wolverine, Captain America, Spider-Man, and The Human Torch fighting alongside one another, with the possibility of Galactus and Doctor Doom being involved. With Avengers: Infinity War coming in May of 2018 and a fourth one to follow the year after, a soft-reboot of the Marvel Cinematic Universe seems likely in the fallout of the Avengers’ conflict with Thanos.
Fox still has The New Mutants, Deadpool 2, and X-Men: Dark Pheonix scheduled to come out next year, but the much-distressed Gambit film seems to be encountering another roadblock with this dealing being made. With filming scheduled to begin in February, the current state of the film is in question.
Comic Book Resource also reports that Bob Igor, Disney’s CEO, is assuring that Deadpool will remain unchanged. The CEO had this to say:
“[Deadpool] clearly has been and will be Marvel branded. But we think there might be an opportunity for a Marvel-R brand for something like Deadpool,” Iger said. “As long as we let the audiences know what’s coming, we think we can manage that fine.”
Marvel Studios releasing an R-rated film would make Deadpool the first film in their cinematic universe to be rated as such.
Outside of the comic book properties, Disney is also set to obtain the rights to Die Hard, Planet of the Apes, Alien, Predator, Kingsmen, Family Guy, The Simpsons, and the rights to the original Star Wars films. While nothing is confirmed, this could lead to a re-release of the original, unaltered films in the original trilogy.
With so many films on the horizon and properties being used, it will be a waiting game to see what Disney has planned for forthcoming movies in all respective franchises. For the moment, fans can rejoice knowing the X-Men are coming home.
